The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [79]
“Do you have any daughters?” Sgt. White said, posing the most dangerous question for any mother in a war confronted by an armed soldier. “Why do you ask?” she said with great hesitation. He laughed at her, immediately sensing her fears of sexual attack. “I’m just a pious old deacon,” he said, reassuring the women, and told her that in return for the cakes he had presents for her daughters.
Sensing that she could trust the young soldier, she asked her daughters to come down. The first, Sally, descended halfway down the stairs, saw the American soldier and halted, too scared to continue further. “Sally, come down, here is a present for you,” said the young sergeant as he walked to the bottom of the staircase and held up a fine petticoat. The mother nodded and the daughter walked down to the bottom of the stairs and accepted it. White gave the other daughter a pair of shoes. “Try them on and if they fit, keep them,” he said, smiled, thanked the mother for the cakes once more, and left, looking for his regiment.
Again, the weary troops of the Continental Army had no time to celebrate or to rest. It had not taken Lord Cornwallis much time to figure out where the American army had gone after it vanished from the Trenton area during the night. Cornwallis and his army had marched toward Princeton as rapidly as possible after they found the American camp vacant and were within an hour of the town by noon, scouts told Washington. The commander in chief had considered moving from Princeton to New Brunswick, where the British had stores of ammunition and over two million dollars in gold, but imminent arrival of the main British army ruined that plan. Washington settled on his main plan, to move north to the tiny village of Morristown, in the middle of Morris County, twentyfive miles west of New York City, to set up winter quarters.
And so, in the early afternoon, following two fierce battles on successive days, most of the five thousand tired American foot soldiers headed north out of Princeton toward Morristown and what they hoped would be better lodging and a bit of rest (others took prisoners to Pennsylvania). Spies soon relayed the news that Cornwallis had marched to New Brunswick. The main British army would leave New Jersey shortly and return to New York, leaving just small garrisons at New Brunswick, Elizabeth, and Perth Amboy.
The foot soldiers did not yet know, or comprehend, what they had accomplished in their two brutal battles at Trenton and Princeton within that brief ten-day span. They had soundly defeated the best troops of the British Empire, killing over three hundred and taking over twelve hundred prisoners. They had freed most of the state of New Jersey of the main British army and prevented the occupation of Philadelphia. The Continental Congress was now free to return to the city of brotherly love and reconfigure the national government and the New Jersey state legislature was able to meet again.
Foreign powers, especially France and Spain, now believed that it was entirely possible that the Americans might win the war and began to think seriously of coming into the conflict as allies; the French even ordered four ships stocked with gunpowder and muskets to set sail for America. The British government was rocked by the dual defeats. Lord George Germain, head of the colonial office and director of the war effort, realized that the conflict would last much longer than he and his generals had anticipated. Many Americans who had been either sympathetic to the Crown or neutral about the war now changed their mind and embraced the Revolution. The American press, split on its support for the Revolution at the start of the conflict, now sided with the rebels and, in effect, became propaganda sheets for Washington and the army. None explained it better than a